The Written Word
for July 30, 2000

After nearly 20 years in the same house, I am moving. And telling you about it is a bit cheeky because it’s Wendy who has borne most of the brunt. The object, you see, was to move out of a cavernous barn in which she and I and Clancy – and until quite recently Leicester the cat – rattled around in, to a small townhouse somewhere. The problem was we found the town house before we sold our house and thus were in the position of owning two places at the same time. That’s very hard on the pocketbook. So is selling your place then having to live in a hotel with all your belongings in storage while you get a new one. There was, in Mair Manor, a certain anxiety in the air until as if by magic the house sold – the buyers did very well incidentally as buyers always do when owners are anxious to sell – and we had nearly matching vacating and take-over dates.

Now comes, of course, two things. First you sit around the pool watching grandkids and Clancy frolic therein and know you’ll miss this very much … that is you’ll miss everything but the horrendous cost. Secondly comes the realization that you have collected a lot of stuff over the years.

I started with my library and after stuffing 20 huge boxes with only those books I couldn’t do without, saw that I had, perhaps, packed 50%. And of course, after getting all this done found that I had forgotten a few places – like the "throne" reading in three bathrooms … the shelf behind the bed … and that wicker basket in the living-room the Toronto kids gave us a few years back that is a bottomless pit of reading material. And them in the front sunroom too … I nearly forgot that. Between Wendy and me I calculate that 1000 books remain to be disposed of in the next three weeks.

Then it was CDs. I had wound up with four CDs with unmatching cases which meant as I packed them I had to check each one out. I got three of them matched but wound up with two more unmatched for my pains. And how could I possibly have two of the same Stan Kenton CDs, two of the famous Norman Granz’ 1948 Jazz at the Philharmonic Concert and three, count ‘em, of Nat King Cole’s "Unforgettable" album, one of his that is perhaps my least favourite?

Now the fun comes. If you think bookaholics and CD collectors get junk you’ve never lived with a flyfisherman. Some of the stuff is pretty straight forward. The rods all have cases and they can be bundled together with stout tape. And the reels and stuff can be packed into the half dozen or so duffle bags you’ve accumulated over the years. But it’s the flytying stuff that’s tough. I have a big container for much of it but flytying involves saving, over the years, pieces of rope, for example, because the strands are just the right colour for caddis flies in the Tauranga-Taupo River in New Zealand … some wool you bought in a wool shop because the colour is just perfect for what you think will make that fly for Scottish Highland lochs you read about … and of course, magazines with great patterns you’ve saved.

But all the foregoing is mere child’s play compared to the shelves in that dark, dank corner right beside the furnace where all the stuff you dared not throw out but is utterly useless is stored. The first wedding pictures of an earlier wife with an even earlier husband, for example. You throw out the pictures but what about the albums what don’t match the ones Wendy has faithfully kept for the last wonderful 7 years we’ve been together? There are cans of paint, two old portable backgammon games and dozens of framed pictures that you don’t want but neither does anyone else.

A garage sale? To be avoided, we hope. But it’s a hope, once all is uncovered, that may well be forlorn.